Humans Invading Alien Worlds? Ok...

Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles give us a novel view of the "first contact" tale. His cycle of short stories tell of humans traveling through space to greet Martians who can't accept or understand their coming. Then the humans go on to colonize the entire surface of Mars, attempting to make it over in their own image. The colonization of Mars is an analogy to the exploration and settlement of America by Europeans. It can be taken as an extrapolation of European colonization, which first reached across the ocean to America, then into the American frontier; in Bradbury's stories, the European mind-set of colonization is brought by the human race across space to Mars.

The humans initially come to Mars seeking peaceful first-contact. They cannot understand the Martians, and the Martians likewise cannot understand them. This causes an unexpectedly hostile encounter, wherein the humans are killed because they are thought to be incurably insane Martians. The mere psychic presence of the humans has caused an epidemic of madness in the Martian population. This might be seen as analogous to the cultural disease that was inflicted by the visitation of Europeans to America. With no regard for the natives' culture or way of life, the colonists sought to remake the land in their image. Later, we learn that an infection from Earth has wiped out most of the Martian population, the way smallpox killed off many Native Americans.

Humankind, in destroying another culture, cannot help destroying itself. There is a nuclear war that kills off much of the life on Earth. In the final story, the imagery of the Martians in human reflections provides us with Bradbury's stance. Our inability to see humanity in the foreign is the same inability to see the worth of human life. Our disregard for others is the same as disregard for ourselves.